


Retry

by Measured



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Virtue's Last Reward Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jumping was like waking up slowly from a hangover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiu227](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiu227/gifts).



> Hints at, but doesn't quite go to, ZTD spoilers. 
> 
> HC_Bingo: Apocalypse.

Jumping was like waking up slowly from a hangover. Unfamiliar material against his skin, unfamiliar people, the same nauseous rise and fall. He was usually clothed, which was more than he could say for the hangovers he'd been through.

He'd been in this room before, a cement bomb shelter filled with static and white noise. Far below the earth, far below all the destruction that Radical X could bring. He coughed, and gagged as the world settled back into the shithole that was this December he'd been living through over, and over and fucking _over_.

If asked at gun point, he couldn't have even said how many times he'd ended up back here, with Akane's slim back turned to him. More than ten? Probably. Fifty? A hundred? He wouldn't be surprised.

Sigma covered his mouth with his hand. "I wanted to avoid the last parties of the year, but this wasn't what I intended."

"Decades apart, Sigma," she said.

Of course. His mind was still Sigma Klim, college student. He was still catching up, little by little.

But, the future could be changed. Maybe next time he jumped, Sigma Klim, lab guy would have a nice pair of Groucho glasses. He really needed to liven things up; a rabbit program just wasn't enough to make the base on the moon workable. 

"Please tell me this gets easier eventually," Sigma said.  
Akane turned back. She smiled, but there was something dead in her gaze. He'd seen her young and old, but that haunted look in her eyes never changed.

"Easier? You haven't died enough. By a thousand times, jumping won't be as bad as the time your flesh melted off. Or times, I should say. By a hundred thousand, you will no longer see people as you did. You will know their lives and their deaths over and over and over. And it won't stop."

There was something dark in her, like the images of the Greek gods he'd seen printed in the textbooks. Pallas Athene, or maybe something even darker. Hecate, Persephone in the underworld.

He was a Sci major, but there was one girl he wanted to sleep with who took a bunch of history courses, so he'd bullshitted his way through. He had to say, he liked the Greek gods. They were messy, even human in their jealousy and affairs. And it was a whole lot easier to relate to a deity who couldn't help but sleep with whatever cute woman passed by.

Not that he could believe in much with the world leveled outside of them. He'd heard _there are no atheists in fox holes_ and yet as the bombs fell, he couldn't believe in anything above them. The only one he trusted was Akane, and even that was only in the times he remembered.

Sigma rubbed his head. The headache had started to dissipate as the end of the world struck again. "I really thought it would work this time."

A flip of a coin, and here they were, back to the end of the world just outside them. 

"So often it's one little mistake. Everything is aligned just right, but someone panics. A fire breaks out, a bomb is set, someone snaps..." Her voice grew quieter and quieter. "And then, all you can do is try again."

Another flip of the coin. Another million deaths. She looked haunted, like a veteran of a thousand wars. Maybe one day he'd look like that, when he'd died as many times as she had. Her memory was clearer. For him, the details were fuzzy with each jump. He lost himself, he had to find the way back to secrets and moments. But he knew she remembered. Every death, every bad turn, every single time.

He couldn't imagine a life like that. Anyone lesser would've cracked under the pressure. But she lived and died through worlds all around them. He watched as on the computer screen, she crossed off another ruined attempt to salvage what was left of the future. Notes for the next attempt, the next inevitable failure, for the rare possibility that they'd beat the odds.

The white noise got stronger in his head. He knew the time was limited, until these walls gave to a concrete base on the moon—another try at the impossible.

"Good luck saving the world," Sigma said.

"We'll need it," Akane said.

And he jumped, back into nothingness, vertigo, a coin flip to save the world.


End file.
